Information is increasingly generated, organized and exchanged electronically. The analysis of that information remains a largely human endeavor. In many contexts, the analysis of information is a collaborative process. Tools for the analysis of information have been largely underdeveloped, imposing upon their human users the responsibility for combining information obtained from multiple sources. The combination of this information may include the reentry of data obtained from various sources and the manual alignment of that data with corresponding information obtained from another source. The reentry and alignment of data is time-consuming and error-prone. Further, assuming that the data is eventually entered accurately and properly aligned, the tools must be present to contrast, compare and analyze that information.
Generalized office applications exist that provide some collaborative functions. For example, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, both provided by Microsoft Corp. of Redmond Wash., include some capability for the collaborative editing of a shared data file. The general paradigm of these systems is to either pass data files from user to user for sequential revision or to share a common data file at a central location, where it can be edited by a plurality of authorized authors. The most recent version of the edited data is presented by the user interface. There is some capability for viewing the revisions that led to that most recent version of the data if specifically configured to track changes. When the changes are tracked, the data may be accepted in present form or rolled back to the state of the edited item before revision. These systems also provide a limited merger capability for combining edits made in parallel to a common base file. The merger operations appear to work by finding sections of literals, sometimes referred to as anchors, that are contained in both source files and determining the differentials between the anchors to generate a combined result for display. The merger of parallel edits to data files present concurrency challenges that conventional systems apparently have had difficulty addressing.
Systems directed to information analysis known to exist are directed towards individual users and are presently difficult to use in collaborative environments without significant manual intervention. An example of one of these tools is the Analysis of Competing Hypothesis program (“ACH”) provided by Xerox Parc of Palo Alto, Calif., and available for download at http://www2.parc.xerox.com/istl/projects/ach/ach.html. Version 2 of the ACH program is a tool primarily employed by the intelligence communities to analyze competing hypotheses by breaking out, commenting and scoring evidence values associated with each hypothesis. The ACH program is organized in a tabular format, with each hypothesis represented by a column, each evidence under consideration represented by a row, and various evidence values associated with each hypothesis represented by a value cell. Version 2 of the ACH program, including its associated help files, are incorporated herein by reference.
There exists a need for a collaborative information and analysis system that automatically aligns data from multiple users. A system that is lightweight in its requirements, easy to use and administer, flexible in its presentation of values and accurate in its combination of values added, deleted or changed by a plurality of contributors would be particularly advantageous.